About

Founded on Oahu in 2011 by two brothers, Jeff and Ryan Mohr,
to help people make sense of complicated relationships.

We’re a remote team with roots in Oahu and Silicon Valley.
Driven by our work with the Omidyar family, we are dedicated to
helping organizations create lasting impact. We’ve seen first hand
how easy it can be for organizations to spend billions of dollars and
not make significant progress.

The initial idea for Kumu (which means "source of wisdom" in Hawaiian)
came from a need to visualize relationships in the Hawaii renewable
energy space. Existing tools were overly academic and painful to
use—so we decided to build one of our own. The result was a step
forward, but ultimately the network map wasn’t all that valuable
by itself.

We had visualized who the key players were and how they were
connected, but we needed more. We needed a way to better understand
all of the factors coming into play. These factors are intertwined
in ways that can be difficult to understand (and even harder to talk
about) unless you take the time to visually map each one.
We needed a way to expose assumptions and encourage debate.
We needed a way to incorporate differing perspectives.
We needed a way to show the influence stakeholders have on different
parts of the system.
And we needed to do all of this in a way that
wasn’t completely overwhelming.

In essence, what we needed was a simple way to talk about complex
systems. And that’s what Kumu has evolved into today.

We’ve been influenced by a number of great thought leaders and
organizations. Santa Fe Institute deserves a lot of the credit for
seeding our ideas on complex adaptive systems and networks.
Donella Meadows’ books provided a great primer on finding leverage
within systems. June Holley shared thoughtful techniques on
cultivating networks and using visualizations to support that work.
Scott Spann showed us how systems mapping can work as a group process
and how powerful it can be in building shared understanding and
alignment. Rob Ricigliano taught us the importance of feedback loops
and how powerful narratives around those loops help people understand
the fundamental patterns driving a system. Gene Bellinger made systems
concepts approachable, and hammered home the idea that systems
thinking is about solving problems in ways that they stay solved and
don’t create new problems in the process. And we can’t forget our own
father, who has been instrumental in the adoption of systems
approaches across the Omidyar organizations.

For our next phase, we’re tying in the recent advances in behavioral
sciences regarding how individuals make choices for themselves and
society. We strongly believe change happens through individuals, and
trying to move systems without considering individual mindsets and
motivations is a waste of time and money. We still have a lot to learn
in this area so if you’re a thought leader in this field, consider
this your warning. We have no shame admitting the stuff we don’t know
and reaching out for guidance!

When we’re not working on Kumu, Jeff enjoys long walks on the beach
and romantic candlelit dinners—at the end of 30 mile trail runs with
his wife Kelly. If you've ever seen a guy in your local coffee shop
taking shots of cappuccino, talking on the phone, answering emails,
and lacing up his running shoes (all at the same time)—that was Jeff.
Ryan is a recovering surfaholic, slowly adjusting to the
responsibilities of parenthood while running a startup.
If you’re ever on Oahu, you’ll often find Ryan relapsing into the
warm waters of the pacific.

We don’t believe that Kumu is a silver bullet for impact.
Effective strategies require mastery of a number of different fields.
Our hope is that Kumu provides the scaffolding for you to build an
approach that works for your team and makes the whole process a bit
more enjoyable.

Enjoy the journey,
Jeff & Ryan

We’re a small, agile team that’s intensely curious and always searching
for more effective ways to create clarity within complexity.

How can we help you?

Are you working on something big? We'd love to help make it happen.
Join Kumu today and get in touch to see how we can help.